Engaged Learning

Mrs. Wheatley's students are engaged in learning in her classroom. While still covering the basics of what needs to be taught in fourth grade, Mrs. Wheatley uses a variety of ideas to engage her students and help them on the path to learning to enjoy learning and learning to think for themselves. Here are some examples from her classroom:

While working on a new math concept, Mrs. Wheatley first explains the idea on the projector. As she is doing that, the students are copying what she writes into their math notebooks. She has a jar with students names on sticks that she uses to randomly ask what the next step is in solving the more complicated problem. She then gives the class a new problem to try on their own. As soon as a student thinks the have it figured out, they raise their hand; Mrs. Wheatley comes and checks their work. If they do have it right, then they walk around the classroom helping their fellow classmates. Soon more students were available to help than were still working on the problem. This engaged learning activity helped keep students on their toes - they never knew when they would be called on, and it helped them stay on task by giving them a special privilege once they were done.

Another effective way that Mrs. Wheatley keeps her students engaged is by presenting relevant and interesting topics. In order for students to recognize general themes, supporting information, and what myths are, she gave them a handout titled, "Myth Busters of the Animal Kingdom." As soon as the students saw the title, they were interested because of the popularity of the TV show with the same title. Mrs. Wheatley then had the class tell her what a myth was, which in turn made them want to know what myth they were going to bust. Sometimes children are interested in things that adults find off-putting, so today's myth was about toads and whether or not they cause warts. This kept the students interested and engaged all the way until the lesson was over.

Sometimes being engaged does not have to be with the whole class, as Mrs. Wheatley showed when the students worked on their fluency passages. Students were paired into teams with someone who was on the same fluency level as them. They then got to take turns timing each other to make certain that they both met the goal. The students learned to be honest with each other and if they did not meet the goal this time, they reflected it on their page. They also practiced empathy by not gloating or putting down those who were at lower fluency speeds. They supported each other, which helped the community engaged learners and the classroom as a whole.

Going over the previous days math homework was not a particularly engaging activity for most of the students. Mrs. Wheatley had students trade homework with others at their table (of those who actually did their homework) and then she told the answers and had them shown on the projector. A couple of things  from this lesson could have made this a more effective time in class. One would have been to have an assignment that was required for those who did not bring back their homework, so they were not just sitting there. Another would have been to ask various students what the answers were, then show them as they were answered, rather than just going down the page and telling all the answers. In order to make it more engaging, it would have taken longer, so perhaps that is why Mrs. Wheatley chose to do it as she did.